Open letter to any company running a video, podcast, music, or audiobook service: I never want any of these to be within the same application. Never. I don’t want a single monolithic app, since...
Open letter to any company running a video, podcast, music, or audiobook service:
I never want any of these to be within the same application. Never. I don’t want a single monolithic app, since that just makes it a poor app for all of these. That is one of the many reasons I don’t use Spotify. YouTube at least has the right idea with having a separate YouTube music app from the main YouTube app. Now if they could just break off the YouTube gaming bullshit from the main YouTube app so I could never see it again. And please do the same with shorts, so I could never see those again either.
Podcasts and YouTube go well together. YouTube is actually the #1 podcast app by a large margin. And the popularity of video podcasts, as much as that is an oxymoron, has directly influenced the...
Podcasts and YouTube go well together. YouTube is actually the #1 podcast app by a large margin. And the popularity of video podcasts, as much as that is an oxymoron, has directly influenced the rest of the podcasting industry. Many podcasting apps are building in video support.
My main beef with this is that a lot of things that are calling themselves podcasts now aren't available to play in podcast apps, because their sole method of distribution is YouTube videos of a...
My main beef with this is that a lot of things that are calling themselves podcasts now aren't available to play in podcast apps, because their sole method of distribution is YouTube videos of a bunch of dudes talking into microphones at each other. It's changed the meaning of the word podcast into something far less useful, because now there's no way to talk about the podcast-app-compatible things that used to be called podcasts without also lumping in a whole different incompatible category of things.
I've gone back and forth on this as I'm personally in the camp that a podcast has to be a radio program in content that is distributed in audio on a podcast index, available on RSS, to be...
I've gone back and forth on this as I'm personally in the camp that a podcast has to be a radio program in content that is distributed in audio on a podcast index, available on RSS, to be downloaded or streamed to a user on an interface of their choice. By that logic, you could argue that a serialized audiobook, or an anthology of stories couldn't be a podcast, even though radio serials are historically known, and I'm not sure how to feel about it. On the other hand, I know someone who says a YouTuber is podcasting if they're grinding out a Pokemon encounter and shooting the breeze on a video, and that irks me.
Unfortunately this is the same company that shut down Google Podcasts to roll it into YouTube Music, and it doesn't work anywhere nearly as well as it did when it was a separate app.
Unfortunately this is the same company that shut down Google Podcasts to roll it into YouTube Music, and it doesn't work anywhere nearly as well as it did when it was a separate app.
I think there can be very specific ways that these things intersect that make sense, like I've been known to listen to e.g. synthwave/retrowave playlist/mix videos on YouTube, which serve dual...
I think there can be very specific ways that these things intersect that make sense, like I've been known to listen to e.g. synthwave/retrowave playlist/mix videos on YouTube, which serve dual purposes of something curated to listen to with little effort and exposure to new songs.
Those don't need any special treatment or a dedicated section of the site or anything, though. People were posting such videos back in YouTube's earliest years when it was nothing but online video hosting with comments (many of which remain to this day). They can just remain in the enormous amorphous blob of videos until users go searching for them.
It's services going after new categories in the more general sense that's undesired. As you note, I've already selected other services for those use cases that do the job better.
YouTube already hosts like every LivriVox recording known to man and includes other readings of public domain books. And there’s more modern audiobooks available that haven’t been taken down if...
YouTube already hosts like every LivriVox recording known to man and includes other readings of public domain books. And there’s more modern audiobooks available that haven’t been taken down if you search for them.
So I wonder if they’re gonna crack down on them as they set it up. And maybe like create their own version of Amazon Classics.
I'm a YouTube Music user so maybe I'm drunk on the Koolaid here but I can see them treating audiobooks like how they treat music on YouTube already. There were already community-uploaded versions...
I'm a YouTube Music user so maybe I'm drunk on the Koolaid here but I can see them treating audiobooks like how they treat music on YouTube already. There were already community-uploaded versions of songs when YouTube Music launched, alongside the "Aritst Name - Topic" autogenerated channels that YouTube created when labels provided access to songs for them. YouTube Music (if I'm not mistaken) just hooks into those autogenerated channels and gives you a different UI. Nothing's stopping you from listening to the community-uploaded songs, which is actually a big reason why I continue to use YTM since I can find plenty of unofficially uploaded video game soundtracks and remixes that I can't find on other streaming platforms.
I can see them leaving the LibriVox versions alone and simply setting up similar channels for authors and then licensing official versions similar to Audible.
They made higher quality versions of them. They had the Amazon Classics label for a while but about three years ago they threw a couple million dollars making much better versions of both the...
They made higher quality versions of them. They had the Amazon Classics label for a while but about three years ago they threw a couple million dollars making much better versions of both the audiobooks and the kindle texts.
Just don't raise the price of YouTube Premium and we're good. I already left Spotify cause they kept adding stuff I didn't want using it as justification to raise the price
Just don't raise the price of YouTube Premium and we're good.
I already left Spotify cause they kept adding stuff I didn't want using it as justification to raise the price
I'm all for more competition in the audiobook space. I love audiobooks and Amazon had a stranglehold on them. As long as this doesn't increase the cost of Premium, then I'm good with it. I also...
I'm all for more competition in the audiobook space. I love audiobooks and Amazon had a stranglehold on them. As long as this doesn't increase the cost of Premium, then I'm good with it.
I also don't want it messing with my YT feed if I use it. I've been careful with marking videos as "Not Interested", so my feed is curated pretty well.
Open letter to any company running a video, podcast, music, or audiobook service:
I never want any of these to be within the same application. Never. I don’t want a single monolithic app, since that just makes it a poor app for all of these. That is one of the many reasons I don’t use Spotify. YouTube at least has the right idea with having a separate YouTube music app from the main YouTube app. Now if they could just break off the YouTube gaming bullshit from the main YouTube app so I could never see it again. And please do the same with shorts, so I could never see those again either.
Podcasts and YouTube go well together. YouTube is actually the #1 podcast app by a large margin. And the popularity of video podcasts, as much as that is an oxymoron, has directly influenced the rest of the podcasting industry. Many podcasting apps are building in video support.
My main beef with this is that a lot of things that are calling themselves podcasts now aren't available to play in podcast apps, because their sole method of distribution is YouTube videos of a bunch of dudes talking into microphones at each other. It's changed the meaning of the word podcast into something far less useful, because now there's no way to talk about the podcast-app-compatible things that used to be called podcasts without also lumping in a whole different incompatible category of things.
I've gone back and forth on this as I'm personally in the camp that a podcast has to be a radio program in content that is distributed in audio on a podcast index, available on RSS, to be downloaded or streamed to a user on an interface of their choice. By that logic, you could argue that a serialized audiobook, or an anthology of stories couldn't be a podcast, even though radio serials are historically known, and I'm not sure how to feel about it. On the other hand, I know someone who says a YouTuber is podcasting if they're grinding out a Pokemon encounter and shooting the breeze on a video, and that irks me.
Unfortunately this is the same company that shut down Google Podcasts to roll it into YouTube Music, and it doesn't work anywhere nearly as well as it did when it was a separate app.
I think there can be very specific ways that these things intersect that make sense, like I've been known to listen to e.g. synthwave/retrowave playlist/mix videos on YouTube, which serve dual purposes of something curated to listen to with little effort and exposure to new songs.
Those don't need any special treatment or a dedicated section of the site or anything, though. People were posting such videos back in YouTube's earliest years when it was nothing but online video hosting with comments (many of which remain to this day). They can just remain in the enormous amorphous blob of videos until users go searching for them.
It's services going after new categories in the more general sense that's undesired. As you note, I've already selected other services for those use cases that do the job better.
YouTube already hosts like every LivriVox recording known to man and includes other readings of public domain books. And there’s more modern audiobooks available that haven’t been taken down if you search for them.
So I wonder if they’re gonna crack down on them as they set it up. And maybe like create their own version of Amazon Classics.
I'm a YouTube Music user so maybe I'm drunk on the Koolaid here but I can see them treating audiobooks like how they treat music on YouTube already. There were already community-uploaded versions of songs when YouTube Music launched, alongside the "Aritst Name - Topic" autogenerated channels that YouTube created when labels provided access to songs for them. YouTube Music (if I'm not mistaken) just hooks into those autogenerated channels and gives you a different UI. Nothing's stopping you from listening to the community-uploaded songs, which is actually a big reason why I continue to use YTM since I can find plenty of unofficially uploaded video game soundtracks and remixes that I can't find on other streaming platforms.
I can see them leaving the LibriVox versions alone and simply setting up similar channels for authors and then licensing official versions similar to Audible.
Similar to how they'd deal with movies and television already?
Wait did Amazon remove public domain Kindle books or did they just make higher quality versions for subscribers?
They made higher quality versions of them. They had the Amazon Classics label for a while but about three years ago they threw a couple million dollars making much better versions of both the audiobooks and the kindle texts.
Can't wait for them to buy a major popular audiobook website and then get bored and mothball it in a year.
Just don't raise the price of YouTube Premium and we're good.
I already left Spotify cause they kept adding stuff I didn't want using it as justification to raise the price
I'm all for more competition in the audiobook space. I love audiobooks and Amazon had a stranglehold on them. As long as this doesn't increase the cost of Premium, then I'm good with it.
I also don't want it messing with my YT feed if I use it. I've been careful with marking videos as "Not Interested", so my feed is curated pretty well.
This makes actually sense to me, more than the fact that you can play games on youtube (and netflix)